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Friday, July 26, 2013

"We are all Trayvon Martin!"

From
A World to Win News Service;

The acquittal of George
Zimmerman, the gun-carrying neighbourhood vigilante who murdered the Black
teenager Trayvon Martin, sent waves of anger rolling across the U.S.

During the hours while
the jury was deliberating the case, vigils and rallies were held in many American
cities to await the verdict. The jury accepted Zimmerman's argument that he
shot Martin in self-defence. As soon as the judge told Zimmerman he could take
back his gun and walk out of the courtroom a free man on the night of 13 July,
marches, demonstrations and other forms of protest broke out, including in
Sanford, Florida, the small Southern town where the killing took place.

That night there were
major protests in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles in California;
Chicago, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; Washington; Harlem, New York; and many
other places. The following day some 5,000 people marched through various parts
of Manhattan, gathering support as they went.

As described byRevolution,newspaper of the Revolutionary
Communist Party, USA, "At times the march went against the traffic, people
walking between the cars as drivers honked in support. People chanted, 'We are
all Trayvon Martin' and 'No Justice, No Peace'. Started by revolutionaries,
hundreds took up the chant 'The whole system is guilty' on their own. As the
march went through the crowded streets of Manhattan into Times Square, many of
the onlookers cheered in agreement.

"The marchers were an incredibly diverse array of
people – young and older, from the 'hood, including hard-edged youth, along
with people of all nationalities. For many, this was their first political
action. There seemed to be a pleasant surprise among many Black people that
many white people had come out to demonstrate.

"Protesters filled the streets of Times Square with
thousands of tourists taking pictures and video recording the march. A rally
was held in the middle of Times Square with people climbing on top of
five-foot-high garbage containers with a bullhorn. Twice revolutionaries
addressed the crowd, calling on people to resist this open season on Black and
Latino youth… pointing to the reality that stopping outrages like the murder of
Trayvon Martin, the slow genocide against Black people, and all the system's
crimes once and for all requires revolution, nothing less… and calling on
people to get into Bob Avakian. At one point, several hundred people continued
the march, heading for Harlem."

Following are excerpts from an article on the eve of the
trial, before the verdict. "Lies, Slanders... and the Cold-Blooded Lynching of
Trayvon Martin" appeared in the issue ofRevolutiondated 14 July. (www.revcom.us)

****

...Trayvon Martin was a
Black teenager gunned down by a vigilante killer just after 7 pm on the evening
of February 26, 2012. He was walking to his father's house with a can of ice
tea and a bag of candy.

George Zimmerman knew
nothing about Trayvon Martin, never even heard of him. But he thought he knew
him. All Zimmerman had to see was a young Black man in a hoodie [hooded
sweatshirt] walking home with a snack, and he "knew" that Trayvon
Martin was a "suspect". He "knew" Trayvon Martin was a
"fucking punk." He "knew" Trayvon was "a fucking
asshole" who "always gets away with it."

...And through this all,
Zimmerman has acted as if he has a whole system behind him. For good reason.
The Trayvon Martins of this country (and this world) have been branded suspects
by a system that has no future for them. From endless depictions of them as
thugs on TV and in the movies, to the institutionalized criminalization of them
through "stop-and-frisk", to the schools-to-prison pipeline to mass
incarceration, they are a generation for whom this system has no future.

...But Trayvon Martin
was a human being! He had a right to live, to have a future, and so do millions
like him. And so the stakes of this trial are truly decisive to the kind of
world people will live in.

...As the prosecution
presented its case in this trial, over and over it has been revealed how
Zimmerman coldly murdered Trayvon. Evidence has come out that Zimmerman got out
of his car, followed Trayvon when the non-emergency dispatch operator told him
not to, lied to the dispatch operator to cover his tracks as he stalked
Trayvon, and shot Trayvon Martin point-blank through the heart.

...This was most true of
Rachel Jeantel, Trayvon's friend since grade school, who was talking on the
phone with him when Zimmerman began stalking Trayvon. Rachel Jeantel's
testimony is some of the most substantial in this case, and she is one of the
more credible witnesses. The time and length of her phone calls with Trayvon as
he walked towards his father's home are well documented, and they corroborate
most closely with all the available evidence. And these are precisely the facts
that are "lost"or "forgotten" in much of the media
commentary on Rachel that has focused instead on her appearance, her demeanour
and her attitude.

...What made the murder
of Trayvon Martin different from the murders of other Black and Latino youth
was thatdespitethe police treatment of
Trayvon's murder as legitimate self-defence by George Zimmerman,despitethe fact that no charges were
immediately filed against Zimmerman,despitethe treatment of this case in the
Florida media as "just another killing of a Black youth who was somewhere
he shouldn't have been", the story of a 17-year-old kid wearing a hoodie
who was shot down while he was walking to his father's home with a soft drink
and a bag of candy became national news – and a focus of national outrage and
protest.

...In 1955, Emmett Till,
a 14-year-old Black youth from Chicago was lynched by white men while visiting
relatives in Mississippi. His body was horribly mutilated, weighted with a
70-pound fan, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River. The killers were not
charged.

...Emmett's mother,
Mamie Till, courageously insisted on an open casket at her son's funeral, so
people could see what had happened to him. The widespread outrage and anger
that spread throughout the country over the savage death of Emmett Till became
a spark that catalysed thousands of people in a growing struggle to end the
injustices perpetrated on Black people.

...The cold-blooded
murder – the modern-day lynching – of Trayvon Martin also sparked deep and
widespread outrage throughout U.S. society. And now we're at a crucial turning
point in the struggle for Justice for Trayvon.

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